


We Are All Much Closer Now

by Movie_Riggs



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And cheer myself up, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, I'm going to fix what happened many times over, No matter how many fics it takes, Post-Infinity War angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-04-30 08:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14492835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Movie_Riggs/pseuds/Movie_Riggs
Summary: Peter Parker returns to school after the conclusion of the Infinity War, where he and his friends deal with the post-traumatic stress of Thanos' genocide.Second chances don't come that often, but they're still difficult to take when they come with the price of remembering how you and half of humanity died.





	We Are All Much Closer Now

**Author's Note:**

> It's very likely that whatever they do in Avengers 4 w/time travel or the quantam realm or whatever to reverse Thanos' mass murder will not allow anyone who was disintegrated to actually remember what happened. But in the case of this fic, they all remember.

 

Peter Parker fully expected to receive a thorough, high-pitched lecture from his aunt the moment he stepped back into the apartment in what felt like years but had only been days since the Giant Circle Ship first appeared in the sky over New York City. He was relieved to find that she was much too distraught to have the energy to do anything but hug him to her chest and weep. She had not been a victim of Thanos' genocide, thank God, but Peter imagined it was probably just as bad to watch half the world's population collapse into a pile of dust as it was to be included in that half of the world. Still, despite the fact that Aunt May was horribly overwhelmed by it all, Peter wished desperately that he could have been lucky enough to escape the snap of the Titan's fingers.

He would wake up each night in an awful sweat, unable to move his limbs and feeling that they had already crumbled to ashes. Surely the rest of him would follow. But it never did, because the remaining Avengers had fixed things. Thanos was gone, the mass murder had been undone, and Peter, like everybody else, was safe. Unfortunately, there was a difference between having the head knowledge that he was okay and convincing his subconscious of the same thing.

The only upside Peter could find to any of this was that he was not alone in his suffering. He used to be; back when he first became Spider-Man and nobody knew, he would come home after failing to thwart a mugging or get all the civilians out of a burning building and cry himself to sleep. Then Ned found out, followed by Aunt May (who had eventually allowed him to continue his superhero escapades after setting a few ground rules, because though she was terrified, she was also proud. That might change now that he had literally gotten himself killed, but at the moment Peter was far from ready to put the suit back on again anyway). Once his best friend and his guardian knew, he had people to turn to. It was difficult, still, because Ned was always in awe of Spider-Man and believed that Peter's alter-ego was invincible not just physically but mentally and emotionally too. The truth was that he was _more_ vulnerable mentally and emotionally than physically (and he only seemed invincible because of Mr. Stark's tech). But Ned, bless his naive heart, could not understand that. Aunt May did, but in the long run there was little she could do for him other than fix his favorite dinners and hold him when he needed it. Even with the two most important people in his life aware of his after-school activities, Peter had still felt alone. But not anymore.

_Everyone_ was feeling the same way as he was now. He hated it; he would take all their pain away if he could, but even Spider-Man was powerless against post-traumatic stress. And these days, not just Peter but everybody Peter knew was dealing with it to some degree. 

It was slightly different for those who had disintegrated compared to those who had watched it happen. Peter could tell just by watching a passerby on the street which one of them they were. A person who had disappeared--who had literally felt what it was like to die only to return and be haunted by that feeling--would often space out, staring into nothingness with sweat on their brow, fists clenched and teeth gritted. Peter knew them because he did it, too. It was just as easy to note a person who had been lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) enough to survive the Infinity War. Rather than space out, they were constantly high-strung and alert, eyes wide and mouths agape, as if the expressions that had been on their faces when it first happened had not left them all this time. They were always taking precious seconds to look up from whatever they were doing and glance hurriedly around, ensuring that everyone who had been there a second ago was still there. Peter knew them because May and Ned were two of those people.

Neither his aunt nor his best friend had turned to dust that day, but both had seen it happen. May had been out running errands and met an old friend, only for that friend to vanish in an instant. Ned was just getting back home from the field trip, and had walked into his apartment to find several piles of dirt where his family should have been. After stopping by the sandwich shop, Peter was also pretty certain Mr. Delmar had died as well. 

He tried to learn all the names as quickly as he could, but he had been too stressed at the time and Aunt May had gently urged him, "Don't do that to yourself, Pete." So he didn't. He waited, refusing to ask anyone whether they had become dust or entered a permanent state of shock. By the time he felt ready to learn who was who, his eyes had already been trained to tell with minimal effort. 

It was worst when school (eventually) began again. At home, Peter could turn on the TV or lay down in bed with his pillow over his head and shut out the world. There was no avoiding the faces at school. Faces of students and teachers alike who were no different than anyone walking the streets: spaced out or high-strung. It was terrible, because many of his classmates who had once been chipper and happy were just...not. Betty Brant had been a survivor; Peter could tell because she was constantly looking over at Jason during the morning news, clearly expecting him to dissipate at any second. Abe Brown, usually known for making quick (but not so witty, though he tried) remarks, was too busy staring at his own hands, wondering if they were about to break apart into a million unrecognizable pieces.

The situation, simply put, was bad. But the romantic poet in Peter could not help but find it tragically beautiful, too. Everyone at Midtown High was much closer now, in an unspoken but very real sense. It was common to witness or hear about a dozen different breakdowns every day. Some poor young freshman crying because she looked in the mirror and thought she saw her face shattering, or a teacher starting to hyperventilate because a student had stepped outside without telling him, leaving him to think they had disappeared. That was the tragic part. The beautiful part was that they were all united in their misery. Peter no longer felt alone and neither did anyone else. His classmates might not know he was Spider-Man, but a great many of them knew what it was like to fade into nothingness, or at least see it happen. Anybody who had a breakdown could count on three other students to instantly embrace them or offer words of comfort. One time Mr. Harrington started to shake and the entire decathlon team surrounded him, talking all at once and letting him know they were still there. Ned got the chance to put an arm around Betty when she began having a panic attack during gym. And in a particularly odd set of events, Peter had been the only other person in the hall when Flash's eyes grew wide and he clutched his head in agony, whispering hoarsely about "the ghosts." Unable to leave the poor boy be, Peter had stepped up and taken Flash by the arms, assuring his old bully that no one was a ghost. Not anymore.

With the exception, perhaps, of Michelle Jones.

Michelle (or MJ, he had to remind himself sometimes) had not changed one bit since the Infinity War. Peter found this a little astonishing and yet not unbelievable, either. MJ was a textbook loner and always wore the same even frown on her face. Her nose was always buried in a book and on the rare occasions that she spoke to someone on her own free will and without being spoken to first, it was usually a sarcastic one-liner. She was still overwhelmingly pretty, too. Though no one but Ned knew (Flash probably had his suspicions, because he was always on the lookout for ammunition against his peers), Peter had had a thing for her since spring of sophomore year. He never acted on it because it was his opinion that this was an even crazier crush than what he used to have for Liz. The latter had been out of his league, sure, but MJ existed in a realm beyond any league. Yet there were other times when Peter thought he caught her staring at him out of the corner of her eye during lunch or at decathlon. He chalked it up to wishful thinking. If he asked, she would surely say something like, "You had something on your face, loser," or "Yeah, you _wish_ I was looking at you."

On a minor note, he was also beginning to wonder if she suspected or even knew for a fact that he was Spider-Man. 

In short, a lot of emotional turmoil surrounded the subject of MJ and even though there were days when he felt like the Peter Parker that had existed before the Infinity War was a completely different person from the one who existed now, whenever he was around MJ everything was almost back to normal. And that was because she just hadn't changed. Whereas everyone Peter came into contact with was now able to be labeled as belonging in one of two categories, he could not for the life of him figure out which one MJ belonged in. No tears ever fell from her eyes, her hands never shook uncontrollably, her eyes never widened in fright. Anytime Peter thought he had finally deciphered that she must have been one to disappear, he would find himself backing out a moment later and deciding that no, she had not. The question was constantly burning at the back of his mind, but he was afraid to ask. Not just because the two of them rarely talked outside of decathlon, but because Peter did not know if he could handle the answer without breaking down himself. 

The answer came to him anyway, about a month after school had started up again and a few days after that awkward encounter with Flash in the hallway. 

It was by pure chance that he happened to glance out the hall window and see her sitting alone, sans 300-page novel, on the school steps. Under normal (read: pre-apocalypse) circumstances, he would have let her be. But normal was a thing of the past and this was third period; everyone in his grade had a class during this hour. He walked up to the window and pressed his forehead against it, watching her closely.

Her back was turned to him; she would have been facing the football field if she had been looking up. But her head was buried in her knees and her arms were hugging her legs tighter to her chest. It was a position that everyone in school had endured by now.

Peter was quiet when opening the door, because some people's breakdowns put them on edge and he didn't want to startle her. He then stepped gingerly toward her, sliding down into a sitting position so that he was on the same step she was. A pause entered her sobs as she caught her breath, sensing his presence. Before she could look up, he impulsively put an arm around her shoulders. She accepted, leaning slightly into his figure.

"I'm so sorry, MJ," he whispered, not knowing exactly what he was sorry for. 

When she managed to calm herself, MJ replied with an acknowledgment that should have come as unexpected. "I know you tried to stop it." 

It _should_ have surprised him, but instead it affirmed what he had guessed for a while now: she knew. And he was okay with that. "I did," he said. "I did try. I mean, we all did. He was just...it was too much. I'm sorry."

MJ offered a humorless laugh. "What're you apologizing to me for? It's not your fault."

"I know, but..." _But I'm sitting here next to you with an arm around you and yeah, that's the new thing now, because everybody is traumatized and so we all have to hug in the hallway and hold hands in the cafeteria just to reassure one another we're there, but it's_ you _, MJ_. 

"I didn't, you know, like...evaporate, or whatever," MJ said voluntarily, and Peter felt a pang in his chest as he learned the answer to the question he had found himself time and again unable to ask her. She was wiping her eyes with her sleeve now. The crying was done but he could tell she still needed to talk the rest of it out of her system, so he made no move to stand. "My mom did. Although, she's never around anyway so it didn't make much difference in the long run. And Ned was around to text me the whole time. But I thought..."

"...I thought you left me, Peter."

It took him a minute to register those last six words, because they didn't say much on the surface but held a lot of meaning by the shaky tone of her voice. He dared to look down at her, because this was not wishful thinking and she had really said that and he needed to know if she could possibly be saying what he wanted her to. Her deep brown eyes, shining like the sun above them, begged him not to make her spell it out any clearer, because she was naturally introverted and stating what she just did was hard enough as it was. Peter felt a desperate longing for a comfort that he was certain she could give him-- _was_ giving him, in fact, right now--and instinctively used his free hand to take one of hers. Everything about its shape was slender and her skin was warm and smooth to the touch inside his own palm, which he knew was rough and calloused. MJ did not seem to mind, though, so much so that she covered his hand with her other one, caressing it and trying to tell him with the gesture what she was too shy to articulate with her words. Peter understood.

A bright blue sky was bittersweet to him now. Once upon a time a beautiful day like this represented joy and being carefree and thoughts of summer break, but it had been a day like this when the world ended, so how beautiful was it, really? It didn't matter, though. There was something good to be found in every bad thing if one looked hard enough, and Peter had stumbled right onto it just now. Sure, he had died and come back, and he'd have to live with that memory for the rest of his life. But he and MJ were a lot closer now, and that had to count for something.

**Author's Note:**

> This will not be the last post-IW fic I write centering around Peter/MJ. It just won't.


End file.
